How the smallpox vaccine was discovered in China in the fifteenth century
(Hypothetical fiction)
It is now known how vaccination works. A small scratch is made on the skin of the candidate for inoculation, and a very small dose of the disease of interest, or something close (cowpox/ smallpox) is applied to the bruise. The patient develops a mild form of the sickness which the body can deal with, causing it to learn how to tackle with the true ailment by developing what is now known to be antibodies. Hereafter when the dreaded disease shows up, the body is ready for it. It is known that this method was introduced to Great Britain by an African slave called Onesimus who had been a recipient before being kidnapped and enslaved. The big question is, who thought that this method, now called variolation would work?
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In the fifteenth century, in a small town in China, there was a doctor. No one knows his name, so we will call him Dr Chin Yan. Although he was only thirty, he was known to be a man of great wisdom and learning. He was steeped in the teachings of Confucius. Choose a job that you love and you will never have to work a single day in your life, had said the Master. As a doctor he never tired of looking after his patients. He had learnt all the known procedures, and exchanged letters with his fellow practitioners as a means of augmenting his knowledge. He regularly spent time meditating, in the hope that new ideas would occur to him, on possible cures and treatments. Small pox was the scourge of the province, and every year hundreds of people caught it, and most of them died. So far not even the wisest physicians knew of anything that could bring a little relief to the sufferer, let alone cure him or her, but one thing was known: that somebody who had survived an epidemic, albeit with a disfigured face and body, did not catch it ever again.
Dr Chin Yan spent the little money he made on books on medicine, much to his wife Han Suyin’s displeasure. You know all there is to know, she said, did you not train with Dr Lao King? Did you not learn everything? Chin explained that learning was not a closed phenomenon, that new facts are discovered every day, that diseases incurable today might possibly be treated next year.
“Ptuh!” she retorted.
The couple had a little girl Miu Miu who both of them adored. She was a sweet little thing. She had beautiful intelligent eyes, hair like black silk, and at not yet six months, she could say a dozen words (in the Chinese dialect of the province). When small pox reached the town, people flocked to the doctor’s surgery, and Chin, who was aware of the hazards of infection through proximity, feared for Miu Miu.
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According to one chronicle, as they had dreaded, the little girl caught the disease, and husband and wife were close to despair. What kind of doctor am I? questioned Chin, I can’t even cure my own daughter.
Miu Miu was covered in these pustulent spots and died an agonising death within a week. Chin and his wife were distraught, demanding that the God who killed their little angel had better kill them too. The chronicle then reveals that Han Suyin decided to end it all. She went into the room where Chin did experiments with tissues from abcesses, scabs, and herbs and powders, and in a fit of madness swallowed scab dust and lay down to die. But die, she did not. Instead, as people in the neighbourhood were falling like flies, her beautiful face remained unblemished. Chin was also unscathed, but he knew that it was because he had come into close contact with infected patients, his body had learnt how to fight the pestilence.
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Another chronicle from a dubious source talks of Miu Miu and Han Suyin both dying of the pox, and that as a result, Dr Chin lost his sanity. He kept asking people why had God taken his beloved wife and daughter, but left their wives and children unscathed? Then, having lost his mind completely, he decided that he would punish the town. He collected as many scabs from the dead as he could find, put them out in the sun to dry, grinded it in his clay mortar, and with apparent calm, he welcomed his patients. I have received a new treatment from Dr Lao Tze in Hunan, he explained, and I can make sure your children will outlive this calamitous epidemic. The parents were very pleased. He had a few jars of scab dust in his consultation room. He happened to have his father’s silver tobacco pipe, which he had never used because he suspected that smoke from burning tobacco would damage the lung. He sat the children in his consultation chair, put a small pinch of the dust at the mouth of the pipe, placed it below the right nostril of the child if it was a boy, and the left nostril for girls, and gently blew the contents into their noses, smiling kindly, but muttering under his breath, Now go and bloody die! Of course the children did not die. Interestingly most of those who had not come for treatment caught the infection and died shortly after. He regained his sanity and spent the rest of his life praying for forgiveness and curing people of the pox.
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However, both these chronicles have been proved by scholars to be counterfeits. The truth was rather more prosaic and at the same time less terrifying. Dr Chin had been aware that over the years, although he had been exposed to the noxious vapours of infected patients, he had never had a single day’s discomfort except during the year he started practising. He reasoned that this was because his body had learnt how to cope with the emanations. He hoped that one day he might discover how. As rumours of people in the suburbs were getting covered with these lethal spots began reaching him, he decided on a course of action. He had all the trouble in the world convincing Han Suyin, but eventually he took a pinch of scab dust and blew it in the left nostrils of both his wife and daughter from his father’s silver pipe (which is now exhibited in the local museum of medicine). He invited the town to come take advantage of his cure, but only six families responded.
The six families together with his own family were left untouched, but that year the town lost 60% of its population. The following year, people having learnt their lesson, everybody demanded Chin Yan’s “prevent pox” medicine, and it was the only province which escaped unscathed in the whole of China.
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The last chronicle mentioned in this narration has since been proved by carbon dating techniques to be the true account of the first smallpox vaccine.
